Hearing these words, the disciples acted. What they did reveals what they thought Jesus meant when He commanded them to go to all nations. Have they gone to all nations? And they established churches. And we have to do the same.
The Great Commission without a focus on nations loses sight of its biblical context, the attitude of the disciples and their place in God’s mission The Great Commission, without focusing on the establishment of churches, loses sight of what it did when it heard the Great Commission.
- When Jesus said “all nations.
- ” He redirected the mission and sent His people to the nations.
- Depending on who counts and how it is counted.
- There are more than six thousand population groups not affected.
- Of these.
- Just under three thousand are un engaged peoples.
- Meaning that little or no evidence is present.
Nations count in the Great Commission, and God calls us to establish churches between these nations (and others). They need new churches.
Your nation, wherever you read this, is among the nations. Wherever you read this, this passage applies. The establishment of churches must take place in your nation, as well as in all nations. Sometimes it’s because nations live in our nation. In the United States alone, there are more than five hundred uninsured and uninsected population groups.
In a Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary survey published last year, mysiologist Todd M. Johnson and his team found that nearly twenty percent of non-Christians in North America do not know a Christian personally. in the United States they don’t know a Christian. The same goes for more than sixty-five percent of Buddhists, Sintoists, Taoists, Zoroastrians and practitioners of Chinese popular religions. Even forty-two percent of Muslims recognize that they are not close to any Christian They need new churches.
But even people in majority culture need new churches. The church is at the heart of God’s mission to proclaim the history of Jesus to every man, woman, and child. As we look at the New Testament, we see that the intentional implementation of churches, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, was a key method used by early churches to obey Jesus’ commandment, and that should be true today. This includes setting up churches in urban centers, growing world-class areas, rural communities, etc. They need new churches.
The Great Commission cannot be completed without the establishment of churches. Jesus told us to make disciples, baptize, and teach. These three things are done in the context of a local church. If you want people to become disciples, be baptized and taught in the Word of God, whether in a large American city or in a rural village in Asia, church planting must be one of the forms.
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By: Ed Stetzer. © 2014 Ligonier. Original Ministries:?All nations? And the establishment of churches.
This article is part of the April 2014 issue of Tabletalk magazine.
Translation: Vinícius Silva Pimentel. © 2014 Faithful Ministério. All rights reserved. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. Original: All nations and church plantation.